Facebook suspending Native Americans over ‘fake’ names

Native Americans are complaining that Facebook’s “real name” policy results in many accounts being repeatedly suspended, as the company’s algorithm cannot believe names such as Lone Hill or Brown Eyes could be real.

According to
areportfrom Colorlines, users with Native
American names are being locked out of their accounts, with the
social networking site demanding they prove their identities to
regain access.

“We require people to provide the name they use in real
life,” the social network says on its help page. “That
way, you always know who you’re connecting with.”

This policy is having a direct negative affect on Native
Americans, whose rare names sometimes raise red flags. In a blog
post, Dana Lone Hill said she fell victim to this policy, as her
account – active since 2007 – was suspended.

Lone Hill, a Lakota Indian, says she received a message from the
social media giant saying that “it looks like the name on
your Facebook account may not be your authentic name,”
stating that she must submit proper IDs to prove her existence.

After sending in her photo ID, library card, and one piece of
mail, she received a reply from the company urging her to be
patient while Facebook investigated her real identity. After
almost a week, Lone Hill's account was finally restored.

“I had a little bit of paranoia at first regarding issues I
had been posting about until I realized I wasn’t the only Native
American this happened to,” Lone Hill wrote.

One of Hill’s friends had to change his Cherokee alphabet name to
English, while some others “were forced to either smash the
two word last names together or omit one of the two words in the
last name.”

In the case of Ogala Lakota Brown Eyes, Facebook even
“changed his name to Lance Brown,” Lone Hill wrote,
forcing a threat of a class-action lawsuit for the company to
allow him to use his real name again.

Some Native Americans have been granted administrative protection
status to avoid recurring problems, such as Shane Creepingbear,
who was “kicked off Facebook for having a fake name” on
Columbus Day last year. Creepingbear, of the Kiowa Tribe of
Oklahoma, says it’s a “problem when someone decides they are
the arbiter of names...it can come off a tad racist.”

To deal with the problem – which apparently started in 2009 –
more than 10,000 Indians signed a petition calling on Facebook to “allow
Native Americans to use their Native names on their
profiles.”

A Facebook spokesperson told Colorlines that significant
improvements have been made by the company recently,
“including enhancing the overall experience and expanding the
options available for verifying an authentic name.”

Facebook’s real name policy faced harsh criticism a few months
back when it barred some members of the drag queen community from
going by their stage names on the site. The incidents prompted
the social network's chief product officer, Chris Cox, to
apologize "to the affected community of drag queens, drag
kings, transgender, and extensive community of our friends,
neighbors, and members of the LGBT community for the hardship
that we've put you through."